Information Technology for the TwentyFirst Century IT2

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Information Technology for the Twenty-First
Century (IT2)

• Professor David J. Farb er
• farber_at_cis.upenn.edu
• http//www.cis.upenn.edu/farber

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First some comments

• ICANN
• Drivers of the future
• the all optical era
• the wireless age

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Information Technology for the Twenty-First
Century (IT2) - An Investment in Americas
Future

• President Clinton and Vice President Gore propose
  a 366M increase in the Governments investment
  in IT RD for the fiscal year 2000 budget
  
• IT2 builds on the Governments previous
  accomplishments and current investments and the
  PITAC report

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The Federal Government Plays a Critical Role in
Supporting Fundamental IT RD

• Federally-sponsored research has helped build the
  technology base on which the computing industry
  has grown
  
• Fundamental research is key to stimulating
  innovation, and innovation is key to continued
  U.S. leadership in IT
  
• Federal research funding complements, rather than
  preempts private research investments
  
• The benefits of fundamental research are
  generally too distant and too uncertain to
  receive significant industry support

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Federal Funding for Research Helps Create the
Human Resources That Drive the IT Revolution

• Federal funding for research plays a critical
  role in educating students in the computing
  field
  
• Approximately 60 per cent of IT2 funding will be
  spent at universities
  
• IT2 funding will train students and help create
  exciting research environments to attract and
  retain faculty

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Compelling Reasons to Increase IT RD (1)

• IT is a growing component of the U.S. economy,
  currently accounting for more than 750 billion
  in annual revenue
  
• IT leadership will be critical in the 21st
  century
  
• Past Government-funded IT RD has yielded huge
  economic return on investment, and continues its
  pivotal role in promoting innovation
  
• IT is beneficial to a wide range of important
  national goals, including a world-class education
  system, a strong defense, access to affordable
  high-quality health care, and improved quality of
  life for Americans

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Compelling Reasons to Increase IT RD (2)

• As our economy and society increasingly depend on
  IT, we must be able to design information systems
  that are more reliable and more secure
  
• IT will revolutionize our national science and
  engineering RD strategy - high-performance
  computing and simulation technology will allow
  researchers to develop life-saving drugs more
  rapidly, better understand the functions of our
  genes once theyve been sequenced, more
  accurately predict tornadoes, and design engines
  that are cleaner and more fuel-efficient
• Funding research will help the intellectual base
  grow, thereby ensuring continued innovation

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IT2 Built on a Firm Foundation

• IT2
• Responds to recommendations from the Presidents
  Information Technology Advisory Committee
  (PITAC)
  
• Reflects output from numerous workshops held by
  research communities

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Major IT2 Investments

• IT2 will increase Federal investments in
• Fundamental IT research
• Advanced computing for science, engineering, and
  the Nation
  
• Research in the ethical, social, and economic
  implications of the Information Revolution, and
  support for the education and training of
  Americas IT workforce

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Fundamental IT Research

• Long-term high-risk investigations of key issues
  in computer science and engineering
  
• Research focal points
• Software
• Human computer interfaces and information
  management
  
• Scalable information infrastructure
• High-end computing

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Fundamental IT Research Software

• Highest IT RD priority according to PITAC
• The demand for software exceeds our ability to
  produce it
  
• Todays software is fragile, unreliable, and
  difficult to design, test, maintain, and upgrade
  
• Proposed research areas
• Software engineering
• End-user programming
• Component-based software development
• Active software/Adaptive software
• Autonomous software/Embedded Computing
• High-assurance software

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No Surprise Software
No Roads, no rules Chaos and Surprise
Science and order No surprises
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Scalability and Ubiquitous access
Information, simulation and access from a single
user to a variety of resources, distributed and
of vastly different scales
National Simulation resource
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Fundamental IT Research Human Computer
Interaction and Information Management

• Research to improve the ways we interact with
  computers
  
• Computers are still too hard to use surveys show
  that computer users waste over 12 percent of
  their time because they cant understand what
  their computers are doing
• Improved accessibility for people without a
  keyboard (for example, mobile professionals and
  doctors) and persons with disabilities and the
  elderly
• Better techniques for locating data and
  extracting knowledge from data
  
• Proposed research areas (examples)
• Computers that speak, listen, and understand
  human language
  
• Information visualization

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Fundamental IT Research Scalable Information
Infrastructure

• Research to support the phenomenal growth of the
  Internet
  
• In 1985 the Internet connected 2,000 computers
• Today it connects over 37 million computers
• Future networks will connect at least a billion
  users and will be more complex - they will
  connect sensors, wireless modems, and embedded
  devices
• Proposed research areas
• Deeply networked systems (scalability)
• Anytime, anywhere connectivity (wired and
  wireless)
  
• Network modeling and simulation

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Fundamental IT Research High-End Computing

• Leading-edge research for future generations of
  computing to
  
• Improve computational speed on applications
• Increase the efficiency of massively parallel
  systems, with a focus on systems software
  
• Develop technologies to enable future systems
  capable of a thousand trillion (1015)
  calculations per second
  
• Proposed research areas
• Improved supercomputer performance and
  efficiency
  
• Creation of a computational grid
• Revolutionary computing

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Advanced Computing for Science, Engineering, and
the Nation (1)

• IT2 will obtain computers that are 100 to 1,000
  times more powerful than those now available to
  the civilian research community, and make them
  available on a competitive basis
• These systems will have several thousand
  processors, high speed shared and distributed
  memory, and state of the art switching
  technology
• Install and develop systems capable of 5 trillion
  (a thousand billion) computations per second by
  the end of fiscal year 2000, and 40 trillion by
  the year 2003

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Economic and Social Implications of IT and IT
Workforce

• Increased research in economic and social impacts
  will
  
• Help in the design of information systems
• Identify barriers to adopting IT and its
  applications
  
• Provide more empirical data to policymakers
• Encourage the solution of problems caused by IT
• Proposed efforts in training IT workers at U.S.
  universities
  
• Faculty access to modern curricula and
  instructional material
  
• Graduate and post-graduate traineeships
• University research grants through other
  components of this initiative will help support
  graduate students